Environment

Grandmother Censored by Oil Giant

by odiyya | May 17, 2007 at 10:55 am

719 views | 15 Recommendations | 3 comments

A feisty 85 year old grandmother from Colorado is finding herself in the middle of a David vs. Goliath media battle with oil sands giant Syncrude regarding a website she built to demonstrate the environmental impacts of the company's operations.

Last summer, Liz Moore took a tour of Syncrude's operations during which she photographed various standard sights such as big trucks, oily sand and bison grazing on reclaimed land. However, after seeing the devastation caused by oil sands extraction first hand, she became convinced that Americans needed to see what their thirst for oil was doing to the Canadian environment. Syncrude disagreed, and in April they responded with legal action stating that they owned the photos that Ms. Moore took and that she must be immediately remove them from her website.

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jordan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:25 on May 17th, 2007

odiyya, this is great. Thanks for sharing this with us. Big companies often use copyright law to control their public image, whetehr or no the law is realy on their side; few individuals have deep enough pockets to challenge these behemoths.

Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 12:07 on May 18th, 2007

odiyya, thanks for posting this. It's good to know that people are fighting to show the realities of some of these places.

odiyya

at 14:30 on May 18th, 2007

Thank you both. Just as importantly if any members have oil sands photos they are willing to share, please post them. I've been in contact with Liz and she is actively seeking new photos to replace the ones that Syncrude forced her to remove from her site.